Nobody is immune from the feeling that change is accelerating with each passing year. This sense of "future shock" is perhaps most closely associated with information technology. We've all experienced the anxiety, frustration and resentment that accompanies the introduction of a new version of software on which we depend, or the realisation that people younger than ourselves have adopted a new technology that makes their lifestyle seem very different from our own.

Worries about rapid change also bubble up in response to scientific progress, especially when it raises moral questions. We've seen this time and again with controversies over evolution, reproductive rights, the origin of the universe and nearly all issues in science that relate to human values.

Biology is an especially volatile source of sensitivities. The old biology was mainly observational, but the new biology, or biotechnology - including stem cells, embryo research, synthetic biology and reproductive technology - has unprecedented power to change basic life processes.

In theory, everyone is for the learning organization or the mobilization of collective intelligence. How could you be against it? Would that make you in favour of the "stupid organization"?

eCollab Blog Carnival post suggested by Frederic Domon. It looks like a great idea. ~ Deb

Few organizations have developed a model for a sustainable learning organization.

So, is collective intelligence a myth? What are the reasons for successive failures at attempts to implement the learning organization? How can this be fixed?

Please join us in this discussion!

If you wish to participate (2 choices):

Do you have a blog?

Respond with an article you publish on your blog. Send an email to fdomon (at) entreprisecollaborative.com or a tweet to @hjarche or @fdomon to make sure we do not forget your article. Please mention the context in which this article appears: Insert a link in your article to www.entreprisecollaborative.com If you use Twitter, send a message linked to your post using the hashtag #ecollab We will publish all articles, or excerpts of them on the site. This will make for easier reading of the blog carnival. We will link to the original article and will contact you for a short bio and photo to include with the article

You do not have a blog but this interests you?

Send your article directly to fdomon (at) entreprisecollaborative.com. We will then publish it.

Good blog Carnival and thank you in advance for your participation. - Frederic Domon.

Taking photographs during nights or low light situations can be lots of fun captured by specialized equipment such as SLR cameras, tripods, cable releases and flashguns. After sunset, as the light that passes brings a special quality to our everyday world magically transforms all buildings, fireworks and the northern lights becoming popular subjects. For this post, we have compiled a collection of striking examples of low light photography.

The universe is comprised of a large amount of invisible matter, dark matter. It fills the space between the galaxies and between the stars in the galaxies. Since the prediction of the existence of dark matter more than 70 years ago, all sorts of researchers – astronomers, cosmologists and particle physicists have been looking for answers to what it could be. With the latest observations from the Planck satellite, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, may be closer than ever to a solution to the origin of the mysterious dark matter.

“The Planck Satellite has observed a very unique emission of radio radiation from the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By using different methods to separate the signal for very broad range of wavelengths, the Planck team has been able to determine the spectrum of the radiation. The radiation has a spectrum which has the same form as that of synchrotron emission, which originates from electrons and positrons circulating at high energies around the lines of the Magnetic Field in the centre of the galaxy, and I believe that there are quite strong indications that it could come from dark matter,” explains Pavel Naselsky, professor of cosmology at the Discovery Center at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Pavel Naselsky explains that leading scientists like Niels Bohr professor Subir Sarkar have predicted, using calculations, that dark matter may consist of very heavy particles that are around 10 times as heavy as the Higgs particle, that is to say, 1,000 times heavier than a proton. But they have very unique properties and do not interact with ‘normal’ matter particles. Dark matter particles are also usually very scattered and do not interact with each other.

“The radiation cannot be explained by the structural mechanisms in the galaxy and it cannot be radiation from supernova explosions. I believe that this could be proof of dark matter. Otherwise, we have discovered absolutely new (and unknown for physics) mechanism of acceleration of particles in the Galactic centre”, says Pavel Naselsky, and he expects exciting new results already within the next few months.

How Social Tools Are Changing The Way We Collaborate [Future Of Work] - PSFK Digital platforms are pushing work from the tactile and analog worlds of solitary ownership, towards collaborative work processes, making it difficult for a single...

In the world of website development, they say content is king. In the world of training/education, you can provide truckloads of content, but it's really context that rules.

Why Include Scenarios?

I like this article! Hey -- in business we are constantly having to educate people about our product or service. So here's an idea for you -- use scenarios in your presentations to get everyone involved in on-the-spot learning. Providing someone an experience of your company, product, service builds instant connection, rapport, and transfers knowledge.

The author has a terrific diagram in the article about creating scenarios along with lots of great links.

Now if you are a trainer, scenarios are not new to you, but I bet you will find the info and links shared here a valuable resource!

Here is a very interesting report on storytelling compiled by Nancy Kanter, Senior Vice President, Original Programming and General Manager at Disney Junior, Walt Disney’s television channel for pre-schoolers and their families, marking their one year anniversary.

On Disney’s influence on storytelling, Lynn Whitaker of the Department of Theatre, Film & TV Studies, University of Glasgow, said: As an academic in the field of children’s media I am frequently struck by the passion and commitment of those who make and promote high quality media for our youngest citizens. By high quality media I mean those programmes, books, games and films that truly have the power to inspire our children, to enrich their lives, to provide insight, wonder and lasting values that shape a child’s understanding of self and others. One doesn’t need to be an academic to know that the name of Walt Disney is synonymous with such media.

Luka Zanier was born in Zurich in 1966. After training as a photographer, he worked as assistant photographer for several photographers in Switzerland and abroad. In 1993 he epened a Studio in Zurich working as a freelance photographer of landscapes, still lifes and people as well as reportage and artistic works. Since 2000, Zanier’s photographs are in several solo and group exhibitions in Europe.

Wes Balda has written a compelling piece on Peter Drucker and our overwrought attention to defining leadership, which is timely, seeing the new Pew report on negative media and presidental election coverage.

Excerpts:

At lunch one day, [Wes] asked Peter to define leadership. He snorted in response, “There is no such thing as leadership.”

WB: He defended this by claiming it couldn’t be defined. He stressed that leaders were only labeled thus because they had followers.

PD: “At best, leadership may be a dimension of management,” he said, “and leaders could be identified because their actions were predictable, or perhaps trustworthy.”

_________________________

Leading could be how we manage, or make knowledge effective through relationships, in powerless environments. _________________________

WB: ...Max DePree identified an important concept – the absence of power. Leading could be how we manage, or make knowledge effective through relationships, in powerless environments.

Results are achieved around or beyond the use of power. “Leading without power” may be the only way leadership works. By definition, then, using power in leading is not leading at all.

DN: Perhaps it's just coercion, or intimidation. From another article excerpted here, from Forbes, note the diagrammed split of leadership and management tools and the placement of "power tools."

WB: So, when Drucker says leaders are only defined by the presence of followers, I believe he means that these followers first exist – and that they are absolutely free from all constraints in choosing to follow.

A well known video on being the first follower helps illustrate this point.

Power is absent, and the decision to follow creates the ultimate democracy. (Drucker, incidentally, was even more focused on civil society after Sept. 11, 2001.)

In any organization, there will always be leaders and followers. It is true that many people hate the fact that they are just simple followers, the main reason why they often time make nasty comments about these leaders.But, despite all these negative comments, a true leader should never be onion-skinned, and should stand firm on what he believes is right and advantageous for the majority, regardless of any negative opinions.

@Victoria, thanks for your comment. It is true that "leaders" must have thick skins. Drucker's point, I believe, is that followers define the leaders, and that leaders may, in many, even most cases be an artifact of management, rather than the magical status we've given them over the years.

Indeed, where would Gandi, Nelson Mandela, Washington and Lincoln be without their first followers and the followings that emerged to turn the tides of public opinion to make significant changes in our histories.

It's a provocative article and I'm glad that people are rescooping it. ~ Deb

As we’ve written before, the beauty of restricting yourself to black and white has similar benefits to the style of minimalism. When color is stripped out, other design elements such as form and texture come to the forefront. Avoiding color is also a great way to quickly improve as a designer, because you’ll no longer be able to lean on your color pallet for visual interest.

And so, if you’re working on developing your style, or are just in need of a bit of inspiration, here’s a list of 25 beautiful black and white print designs. Even if you work exclusively with the Web, the traits that make these designs great can always be transferred over to the screen.

Edmodo provides a simple to set-up, easy to use virtual learning environment which is especially suited to smaller groups. It's a hosted service (unlike Moodle) and works quite well on mobile devices. If you're thinking of offering a blended learning package to your learners then it's a good place to start.

There are many convenient ways to enjoy eBooks right on your computer, without paying for an extra device, and without having to venture to the book store every time you want a new book. It might not be as convenient, but it’s still a great option.

Click to enlarge, or see the full graphic below.It’s not particularly easy being a woman in most countries; even in areas where women are presumably seen as equal to men, their pay is often lacking. But that’s just one part of the problem.

"I have been reading a book on the development of the English language recently and I’ve become fascinated with the idea of word etymology — the study of words and their origins ...

Using Douglas Harper’s online dictionary of etymology, I paired up words from various passages I found online with entries in the dictionary. For each word, I pulled out the first listed language of origin and then re-constructed the text with some additional HTML infrastructure. The HTML would allow me to associate each word (or word fragment) with a color, title, and hyperlink to a definition."

Nobody is immune from the feeling that change is accelerating with each passing year. This sense of "future shock" is perhaps most closely associated with information technology. We've all experienced the anxiety, frustration and resentment that accompanies the introduction of a new version of software on which we depend, or the realisation that people younger than ourselves have adopted a new technology that makes their lifestyle seem very different from our own.

Worries about rapid change also bubble up in response to scientific progress, especially when it raises moral questions. We've seen this time and again with controversies over evolution, reproductive rights, the origin of the universe and nearly all issues in science that relate to human values.

Biology is an especially volatile source of sensitivities. The old biology was mainly observational, but the new biology, or biotechnology - including stem cells, embryo research, synthetic biology and reproductive technology - has unprecedented power to change basic life processes.

By Frank H. Mahnke Color is an integral element of our world, not just in the natural environment but also in the man-made architectural environment. Color always played a role in the human evolutionary process.

According to ENCODE’s analysis, 80 percent of the genome has a “biochemical function”. More on exactly what this means later, but the key point is: It’s not “junk”. Scientists have long recognised that some non-coding DNA has a function, and more and more solid examples have come to light [edited for clarity - Ed]. But, many maintained that much of these sequences were, indeed, junk. ENCODE says otherwise. “Almost every nucleotide is associated with a function of some sort or another, and we now know where they are, what binds to them, what their associations are, and more,” says Tom Gingeras, one of the study’s many senior scientists.

And what’s in the remaining 20 percent? Possibly not junk either, according to Ewan Birney, the project’s Lead Analysis Coordinator and self-described “cat-herder-in-chief”. He explains that ENCODE only (!) looked at 147 types of cells, and the human body has a few thousand. A given part of the genome might control a gene in one cell type, but not others. If every cell is included, functions may emerge for the phantom proportion. “It’s likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent,” says Birney. “We don’t really have any large chunks of redundant DNA. This metaphor of junk isn’t that useful.”

That the genome is complex will come as no surprise to scientists, but ENCODE does two fresh things: it catalogues the DNA elements for scientists to pore over; and it reveals just how many there are. “The genome is no longer an empty vastness – it is densely packed with peaks and wiggles of biochemical activity,” says Shyam Prabhakar from the Genome Institute of Singapore. “There are nuggets for everyone here. No matter which piece of the genome we happen to be studying in any particular project, we will benefit from looking up the corresponding ENCODE tracks.”

iPad teaching apps. ... When I picture a 1:1 classroom, this is exactly what I picture. Talk about student engagement. ... As a teacher though, you can create classes. You could .... Find this blog in the education blogs directory ...

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Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.